


Learn To Walk The Line

by ruric



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003), Firefly
Genre: Community: comment_fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-22
Updated: 2009-02-22
Packaged: 2017-11-13 17:14:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/505846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruric/pseuds/ruric
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I know what you are, Samuel Anders. You’ll find out soon too."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learn To Walk The Line

She’s gone and this time he knows she won’t be coming back.

He wasn’t there to see it happen, but he didn’t need to be. Apollo had come to find him, tracked him down and dragged him into an empty comms room and played back to him the last things Kara, his Kara, had said before her Viper exploded in a ball of flame.

Sam had felt the last of his hopes turn to ashes listening to the sound of her voice. The thing that killed him most was that she didn’t sound afraid. She sounded happy.

"Just let me go."

Lee had always been between them when she was alive, and Sam couldn’t help thinking it was fitting that Lee was there when she died. Gods alone knows she hadn’t wanted him near her for a long time.

These days he spends his time with the pilots and the Chief because they’ve made a place for him. He can’t blame them if they don’t notice he’s dead inside. He’s not the only walking dead man around here. They’ve all lost so much.

His days are simple.

Make sure his Viper is space worthy, fly recon, shoot at what they tell him to and spend his nights in the bar drinking to be able to sleep without seeing her face or finding another woman, different enough to not feel like her.

That’s how he comes to be in his quarters, door locked, with this slender girl, her wide, brown eyes watching him strip off his shirt and vest. She doesn’t talk much and there's something soothing in her silence, her ability not to fill the space with endless chatter. He’d asked her back here and she’d slid her fingers into his hand, let him lead her from the bar and she’d not said a word the whole way.

"Pretty."

Sam glances up at her, he’s been called many things but no-one’s called him pretty recently. But her eyes are on the ink decorating his arm, indelible memory of a marriage that didn’t work.

"Pretty wings...but where are you going to fly away to?"

She’s pulled the jumper over her head, stepped out of her skirt and she’s naked closing the distance between them, graceful as a dancer. Her hand closes on the back of his neck pulling him into a kiss and he figures that she doesn’t really want an answer. Where are any of them going to fly away to? A dream of planet that for all they know doesn’t even exist.

It’s easy to lose himself in her body, she’s leaner than Kara, all hips and angles where in Kara there were curves and softness. But she’s strong too and she tumbles them into his bunk and straddles his hips, her hands pressing his wrists into the pillow. She teases him with sharply bitten kisses until his hips are rocking up into her, his fingers aching to close on her skin.

She smiles against his mouth, her hair falling like a dark curtain around them and she’s nothing like Kara. She might be a little strange, a little different, but after everything sanity isn’t something Sam thinks he can wholeheartedly lay claim to any more.

"What’s your name?"

He hasn’t asked and he finds he wants to know. She’s warm and she’s willing and she doesn’t seem to want any more than he has to give and for tonight that’s enough – but he’d like to know her name.

"River."

She lets him go so he can lift her hair, see brown eyes the pupils blown wide and the rosy flush staining her cheeks to spill down her neck as her body claims him and they move together.

It’s enough to feel her under him, her fingers closing on his arms, digging into muscle. Enough to feel her legs tighten around his hips pulling him in, the heat of her body welcoming him. It’s enough to feel the whisper of her breath on his cheek, to feel another heart beating under his chest and to realise his heart’s still beating too.

After, lying in his bunk watching her dress, he can’t think of anything else to say but thank you.

"Pretty wings and pretty green planets but they’re not your home are they?"

He’s about to ask her what she means but the pressure of her fingers on his lips are soft and still his words.

She leans close to his ear and hums a few bars of a song, a song he’s had in his heads for days, that he can’t quite hear or remember.

"I know what you are, Samuel Anders. You’ll find out soon too."

And she’s gone, sliding out from under his hands before he can catch her. He pulls the blanket up and drifts into sleep with the same four bars of music echoing in his head.


End file.
